[Footnote 44:  There is no indication of any racial division in the attitude of the Scots.  Some Highlanders, from various personal causes, are found on the English side at the beginning of the War of Independence; but Mr. Lang has shown that of the descendants of Somerled of Argyll, the ancestor of the Lords of the Isles, only one fought against Wallace, while the Celts of Moray and Badenach and the Highland districts of Aberdeenshire, joined his standard.  The behaviour of the Highland chiefs is similar to that of the Lowland barons.  If there is any racial feeling at all, it is not Celtic v. Saxon, but Scandinavian v. Scottish, and it is connected with the recent conquest of the Isles.  But even of this there is little trace, and the behaviour of the Islesmen is, on the whole, marvellously loyal.]

[Footnote 45:  Hemingburgh, ii, 141-147.]

[Footnote 46:  Diplomata Scotiae, xliii, xliv.]

[Footnote 47:  Bruce had married, 1st, Isabella, daughter of the 10th Earl of Mar, by whom he had a daughter, Marjorie, and 2nd, in 1302, Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster.]

[Footnote 48:  Nat.  MSS. ii. 12, No.  XVII.  The original is preserved in the Register House.]

[Footnote 49:  Pinkerton suggests that King Robert adopted this arrangement because he was unable to trust the Highlanders, but this is unlikely, as their leader, Angus Og, had been consistently faithful to him throughout.]

CHAPTER V

EDWARD III AND SCOTLAND

1328-1399

Almost immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty of Northampton, the conditions of government in England and Scotland were reversed.  Since the death of Edward I, Scotland, under a strong king, had gained by the weakness of the English sovereign; now England, under the energetic rule of Edward III, was to profit by the death of King Robert and by the succession of a minor.  On the 7th June, 1329, King Robert died (probably a leper) at his castle of Cardross, on the Clyde, and left the Scottish throne to his five-year-old son, David II.  In October of the following year the young Edward III of England threw off the yoke of the Mortimers and established his personal rule, and came almost immediately into conflict with Scotland.  The Scottish regent was Randolph or Ranulph, Earl of Moray, the companion of Bruce and the Black Douglas[50] in the exploits of the great war.  Possibly because Edward III had afforded protection to the Pretender, Edward Balliol, the eldest son of John Balliol, and had received him at the English court, Randolph refused to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Northampton, by which their lands were to be restored to the “Disinherited”, i.e. to barons whose property in Scotland had been forfeited because they had adopted the English side in the war.  A somewhat serious situation was thus created, and Edward, not unnaturally, took